Portland Streetcar - Eastside Line

Eastside Line

Utility relocation work in connection with a 3.3-mile (5.3 km) expansion of the streetcar system to the city's inner eastside began in mid-August 2009. The work of laying the streetcar tracks began in early 2010, with service scheduled to start on September 22, 2012, a delay from what was originally an April 2012 date. The project involved work on the Broadway Bridge that required the bridge's weight to remain constant throughout construction and for work on its lift span to be suspended with 72 hours notice whenever a ship needed to get through.

In June 2003, the Office of Transportation adopted the Eastside Streetcar Alignment Study, a study for an extension of the streetcar to the Lloyd and Central Eastside Industrial Districts. In part, the desire for an eastside streetcar arose from the July 2001 report, Lloyd District Development Strategy. Proponents see it as a component of a potential transportation hub in the Lloyd District, bringing together the streetcar, MAX and bus service. Additionally, the new streetcar line will provide a transit connection between the Lloyd and Central Eastside districts that supporters believe is more attractive and permanent than the bus service (TriMet line 6) currently provided and is more likely to spur development in those areas. Existing businesses along the route have also voiced strong support for the project, believing it will bring new customers who otherwise would be more likely to shop in nearby downtown.

The plans were approved by the Metro (regional government) council in July 2006 and by the Portland city council in September 2007, the council committing to allocating $27 million of city funds. The estimated total cost of the project is $147 million, just over half of which is to be paid for with federal funds. On April 30, 2009, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced the approval of $75 million in federal funding for the Eastside streetcar project, the full amount that had been requested by Portland. This allocation, secured in large part through the efforts of Oregon Representatives Earl Blumenauer and Peter DeFazio, was both the largest and the final component of the financing plan, and consequently the announcement meant the project could proceed to construction as soon as the city council had approved construction contracts. Twenty million dollars in state funds, $15.5 million from a Local Improvement District and a combination of various other local or regional sources complete the funding plan. Construction began in August 2009.

The routing of the Eastside line was finalized in about 2007 and measures about 3.3 miles (5.3 km) in each direction (slightly longer southbound). It leaves the original line at 10th and Lovejoy, runs east across the Willamette River via the Broadway Bridge to the Lloyd District, turns south, passing the Oregon Convention Center, and follows the Grand Avenue and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard couplet to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), the initial terminus. Within the Lloyd District, the southbound routing follows 7th Avenue (from Weidler Street to Oregon Street), so as to come closer to the Lloyd Center and the many office towers in the district, but south of the convention center the route runs south along Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and north along Grand Avenue almost all the way to OMSI. The line's OMSI terminus is located just one block away from the new Oregon Rail Heritage Center.

At that location, the new line will connect with a future MAX line linking downtown with Milwaukie which is under construction and scheduled to open in September 2015. That project includes the construction of a new bridge over the Willamette River. When the bridge opens in fall 2015, or as soon afterwards as funding allows, the city plans to extend the streetcar from OMSI across the river to the South Waterfront district, connecting with the existing streetcar line there, and thereby creating a large loop in the overall streetcar network. For this reason, the Eastside expansion has often been referred to as the "Eastside Loop" or the "Portland Streetcar Loop" – and in spring 2012 it was even officially named the "Central Loop Line" – but completion of the loop would come not less than three years after the opening of the Eastside line and is not currently funded. The planned Milwaukie MAX line is a project of TriMet, whereas the streetcar is a City of Portland effort, but TriMet and Metro have already agreed to permit streetcars to share the new bridge with MAX trains, as well as to allow buses, bicycles and pedestrians—but not private motor traffic.

The budget for the Eastside Streetcar project, which was $148.3 million as of August 2012, includes the cost of purchasing additional vehicles, and in August 2009 the city placed an order with United Streetcar (see Vehicles section, above) for six cars of the same general type as those currently operated, but the quantity was later reduced to five.

The new line opened on September 22, 2012, as the Central Loop Line, or CL Line. The scheduled headways are 18 minutes on weekdays, 17 minutes on Saturdays and 20 minutes on Sundays. Its opening was concurrent with a slight service reduction on the outer sections of the existing line, now called the North-South Line (or NS Line), to 14-minute intervals on weekdays (from the previous 12–13 minutes), but has increased the average frequency to about every 7 minutes on 10th and 11th Avenues, where the two lines overlap.